 Welcome back. So, have you all come back post a short T that we could manage? Well, some questions were posted on the IIT Bombay X platform. And to begin with this session, I would take on those questions. Poorav0788 had requested this question to be answered. I am wondering what is so different about corporate communication and the formal communication. We sometimes do in front of our professors as well as in the seminars. I take this question because it gives me the opportunity to explain what communication is to you. Be it any communication friends, the bottom line would be, you should be understood. So, under the huge umbrella of communication, we have formal communication and informal communication. Informal communication is what we generally have with friends. Wearing, we can at times, at times, you know, we may not regulate our modes, although it is advisable not to hurt people even during informal communication. So, whatever does not bring in revenue would be informal communication, you could say that. Whatever brings in revenue would be business communication. What is business communication? Business communication would be an aspect of formal communication. Now, under the formal communication, take these words, technical communication, business communication, professional communication. Why? When we correspond with government organizations, we correspond in a different manner altogether, especially where the written communication is concerned. So, it could be the bureaucratic methodology of communicating. So, I would advise whenever you are in a fix, what is technical communication and what is professional communication? Just think of the words, technical. What does technical bring to your mind? The moment you think of technical communication, it would be, it has to do something with scientific engineering research. So, if I am planning to write a white paper on cyber security law, right? It would be a very technical topic and it would need technical communication in writing. If I am doing a research on environmental studies, that would be technical communication. Minutes of the meeting, if we have been to a meeting and we are drafting minutes of the meeting, that would be professional communication. Now, what is corporate communication? It is again a part of business communication. Corporate communication would be internal and external. So, when they hold those, when they write those annual reports, those would be corporate communication. So, the internal memos that are circulated, those would be corporate communication. The letters you write to external agency as well as within the departments that would be professional communication. So, just for the sake of ease, we divided communication into several parts. Unfortunately, what has happened is, you know, the simplicity that we had aimed at has suddenly become convoluted. So, whenever you are in a fix, just think of these things. Technical communication would also require graphics, designs, etc. When we come to the written communication aspect, it is the same all over. We follow the seven C's of communication. You have to be correct. You have to be concise. You have to be courteous when you are drafting. The tone has to be formal. Some kind of communication would warrant passive form. Some kind would warrant active form. Some, you have to write in the third person at places. You may have to take on us on certain things. So, do not get waylaid by the terminologies. Just remember that when it is communication, the bottom line is you have to be understood and the second thing is you have to be courteous and correct, concise. And listen until you are asked to explain certain things or it pertains to research. I would take another very interesting question which came from Amrish Sahu. How can we overcome barriers in communication on the basis of gender bias? Well, you would have a session on this later but it is so interesting a question that I felt the need to answer it right away. You need to see them. You may be of any gender but you need to see them as individuals, as professionals, as a team player. What gender do they belong to should not matter. The moment you are aware of them as a professional person, not thinking about the gender, not thinking about what the person is wearing, the moment you start thinking on those lines, we would be able to eliminate this issue altogether. Second, be polite whichever gender it is. Third, do not judge. So, begin with these three things on your to-do list and perhaps you would not face this issue. Another question there have been questions from Deepak Singh on technical communication, the difference between technical communication and professional communication. I hope I have answered it. Yes, there is another interesting question, Bhanu Swaroop. I have a problem to communicate with others. I feel so nervous. I cannot express my thoughts properly. How to fix it? Bhanu, most of us may have this issue. So, whenever you have such a problem, focus not on the people, the audience, but the idea and just express. Take it as a learning process. At your stage, you need to take it as a learning process and go about talking about it. Well, before I take any other question from here, let me visit some of the centres. I am sure you would be back by now. So, yes. Any question there? Any other question there? Yes, ma'am. So, do you want me to answer the... My name is Tahit. My mom is Tahit. My question is, ma'am, that we face a lot of situations when we need to speak in front of the public. So, what are the factors that many folks answer to become a good public speaker? So, it runs on a critical stage. And the next thing is that most of the mentors say that you need to practice a lot. Now, what actually does practicing mean? Because we cannot have some questions just say them, we sit in the room and just turn it down to my audience. That is something impossible. So, what actually does practicing mean? And what are some of the factors which we need to focus on to become a good public speaker? If you want to achieve something, you have to practice. I usually keep my personal life out of these things but then many a times personal examples help you. My son was in the sixth standard and he participated in a debate competition. Waring the category was from the sixth to the twelfth standard. Even his voice had not broken. He was still a child. Oh God, he might be thinking how tough a taskmaster was I. But then he competed with those boys, senior boys and he won the first prize. What we did was, we focused on the idea, the topic of the debate. We practiced on the idea. We recorded the idea and then he went and performed. So, when I say practice, it just doesn't mean that you lock yourself in a room and keep on practicing. No, it just doesn't mean that you have to go to college. You have to study. If you are a working professional, you have to go to your office and take out at least 15 minutes for you in a day. When you get back, just think ideally. Do not switch on the television. Sit ideally and think about the day. How the day has been. Prepare a gist of it and then talk about it loudly. While you are talking, we all have android phones. So, while you are talking, talk to yourself. I don't want you to talk to anyone else. Talk to yourself while you are talking, record it. See how you perform in isolation. Do this for a week. In the second week, start doing this in front of the mirror. You may or may not record it or have it recorded. Start doing it in front of the mirror. Now, you would see your body language when you are making those statements. Third week, start reading one article at least a day. Prepare the gist of that particular article and now practice it in front of the mirror. It's all in the head. You don't need any other thing. You just need a mirror now. So, you go practice it in front of the mirror. Why do I suggest this? Because when you read an article, you would come across at least a couple of words which are new to you or which are professional in tone. Underline those words. Look up their meanings if you do not know them and practice it. Use it while you are rehearsing. That would take care of your vocabulary. Once that is done, try this out for at least two weeks now. A month is over. Beyond a month, start engaging in discussion with people outside. If you are doing it all throughout, it's wonderful. But post these four weeks of conscious effort, start engaging in discussion with anybody and everybody. Don't think what they are going to, that they are going to talk about you behind your back. It is not the time to feel ashamed of anything. It is the time to learn. And believe me, if you do this for a fortnight, you would yourself feel that you have emerged. You have improved. Do that and come back to me. Will you do it? Yes ma'am. Let me inform you ma'am that you are only short of interest. So I think we have some issue related to your microphone. Can you fix that? You did not? Did you get the answer? You did not get the answer? I am just saying that you are not clearly our interest. What has happened? It was a long drawn answer for your benefit. But I am going to just present the gist of it to you. First week, whatever you have done throughout the day, you would think about it and talk about it aloud to yourself. You would just think in an isolated place or anywhere in your drawing room, not switching on the TV. You would just think about it and talk about it. Second week, you would do the same thing. Think about how your day went and then frame a paragraph of say 200 to 300 words in your mind and talk about it in front of the mirror. Third week, you would start reading at least one article per day, underline the words that you do not know and once again, frame the gist of it and practice it in front of the mirror. You would do this for two weeks as this would improve your vocabulary as well as give confidence to you. Post the four weeks, you would start engaging with people in discussions and engage heavily with people in discussions. And after one and a half months, if you promise to do it diligently and religiously, after one and a half months, post to me if you find that you have improved. And if you haven't, you can see me also. Okay? Fine. So any other questions from the center? Okay, PVGS college? What is it? Okay, okay, okay. Amrita, there you go. Do we have any other questions? Hello dear, do you have any other questions? Welcome back. I am, I'm sorry that connection problem was there. Let's have your question. Actually, one of my colleagues with me, her name is Madhuri and actually she fears the camera, she shares with the people, she tries to do the activities, she does her works well. She's a good student but she fears away from everything. She can't communicate with people so what can you suggest for her? Is she there with you right now? Right now she is also listening to you but she is just fearing the camera. Okay, but can we, can you, can we have her on the camera? It would be wonderful to see her. If she's around, please ask her to come on the camera. She just shies away from, she cries. Dear Madhuri, dear Madhuri, here I am. All right, she do her activities well but she's just shying away. She's listening to you. Okay, dear Madhuri. You know, they will come a day, dear Madhuri, they will come a day when you would be forced to be on the camera just as I am. So when in college people would say, okay, the girl who sits at the back of the class and smiles and talks only when it is required. So that was me and here I am interacting with all of you online. So I must have gone through a process. When you know something, you need to be, you need to feel confident about it. I always say, why should we shy away from anybody or everybody? Who are we actually shying away from? Whose responses are we worried about? Madhuri, you may be shying away from people's responses. That perhaps they would laugh at you. Perhaps they would tease you. But tell me, will your friends tease you? Here is your friend who wants you to improve. Here is your friend who wants you to come on the camera and talk. Here is the friend who is proud of your achievement and wants the world to be proud of you. You should be worried about his opinion and not the rest of the world whom you think would laugh at you. Their opinion should not, need not matter ever in life because they are not going to contribute to your improvement to your success. And when you know that those people are going to laugh at you, negate them, do not think about them. Step out. I know it would be very difficult for you stepping out. So start in small measures. Whatever thing you are confident at, prepare a plan around it. And then make a presentation. Make a five minute presentation in front of your class. If five minute is too much, just engage in just one minute. Come, speak, and you see the difference. I was taking a workshop with a Goodridge group of employees and one person came to me and said, he was a very senior professional and he came and said, ma'am, despite everything, I am scared of speaking with the people. I did not do anything, I just engaged him. In front of the entire class, we just kept on talking about his family, about his workplace for five minutes. It is mandatory for my class to make a presentation and when he made his presentation, his colleagues were surprised. They said he had never spoken for this longer duration ever in his career. So I asked the colleagues themselves to ask him what made him do that and he said, ma'am, those five minutes that I had with you, those five minutes when you listened to me, made the difference. So step out, have confidence in the friends who want you to succeed and for some time at least do not think about society or people who do not appreciate you. Does that answer your question, dear? Will Madhvi show her face now? She is just shying away. Okay dear, I will be here for another five to seven minutes and I would love to see you. So let us move on to some other centre for the time being. AKS University, lovely dear, how are you all? May I have your question? Your mic is mute darling, please. We cannot hear you. Check the mic. Good morning ma'am. Good morning, good morning now please. May I have your question? Yes ma'am, this is Nikta Mobir. My question is, what is the difference between POP and IMAP? Sorry? What is the difference between POP and IMAP? That is something which you would have to refer to Rakesh or Professor Sarthi. Professor Sarthi would take that question. Okay? Partha Sarthi would take that question. Sorry ma'am. Professor Partha Sarthi would take that question. Okay? We would concentrate. Right now we would concentrate on verbal and written communication. Fine? Okay ma'am. Any other question? Maybe I could talk. Mahima Parik had sent a question. Raghu Kalyan and Mahima Parik, they had sent a question. I had no great knowledge of English so I just speak normal English. How can I improve it so that my talk should be more effective and impressive? To her also I had suggested read newspaper. I would suggest read newspaper and articles and whatever I had mentioned. Apart from that, it is very important to be an active listener because when you listen to people, you not only learn how to put effective speakers. You not only learn how to frame an answer but you also learn pronunciation and vocabulary. You enrich yourself there. So that is one thing that you can do. Do we have a centre? Yes. Central University of Tamil Nadu. Yes. Welcome. Good morning ma'am. Good morning dear. Do you have a question? Yes ma'am. My name is Rohit Raj. Ma'am, my question is that when I do a job, when I do any work in normal scenario, I give my best performance. When I want to prove that I can give my best, then I give my dull performance, very dull performance. How to handle this performance pressure? Have you ever thought about it? Why does that happen? Yes ma'am. I thought but I did not find any answer. That work which I do in normal way, it is very best performance of mine. But when I did the same work, in a performance scenario, give my best and I challenge myself, I will give my best. Then the reality is very poor. Students, what happens is, when you are consciously fighting against yourself or trying to prove to others that you are the best, the anxiety sets in. When you are anxious, you are not clear headed. Perhaps the objective might get misplaced. And when the objective itself gets misplaced, the result obviously would not be that great. So wherever it is, there is something which is very important and you feel the need to challenge yourself and prove yourself. Take some time out. Think about how you would go about the topic or how would you go about the activity. Draw a plan and outline. See if you need any research. See if you need any help from outside. See if you need to explore anyone else's viewpoint. Pause that and keep yourself calm. Deep breathing should be there. Whenever you feel anxiety setting in, whenever you feel, oh my God, this is something which I have to do. I am getting late. I must prove this. This time I have to get it right. Go have a glass of water. Come back and again start the planning process. Once you have planned everything, if you want, approach your best friend and see if you can have an idea from him about whatever you are doing. If you don't want to do that, it is fine. Expand your vision and then go about. Practice it whatever you wish to do. If it is a presentation, practice it. If it is some activity, rehearse it. You need to know at that time you must plan how others are going to respond to that activity. What happens is in an anxious state of mind, we only think about ourselves. We do not think about how others are going to take this. So an activity requires a response from others because whatever you are doing, you are not an island. You are not going to enjoy it. It would definitely impact the lives of the others. So always bear in mind how the others are going to respond to it. Are they going to benefit from it? So if there is a balance between the two, your activity can never go wrong and you will not be anxious either. So does that answer your question? Yes ma'am. Do you feel satisfied? Yes ma'am. My friend has also said so. Okay dear. Tell me. Good morning ma'am. I am talking to you. Actually ma'am, I am from technical background. I am working in material sense. But in our universe, lots of functions are going on. So it means not technical but non-technical. So I thought of participating in that. But at the same time, in my mind, lots of thought will come. It is not related to our curriculum or it is not related to your syllabus or something. It will be advantageous in the future while you are going towards that. So it is not related to your... It feels related. So is that thought is correct or I should go with that thought? What should I do in that situation? You know I had never thought I would be teaching business communication. I have a PhD in English and then I ventured into this field. My son is a mechanical engineer and he just published his book on poetry. English poetry. So you see, I believe in the maxim, knowledge never goes a waste. You should not think in your college at least you should not be thinking only of academics or only of what is going to further your career. That is your unidirectional approach. It works at times when you are absolutely focused on what you want in life. But even there, when you are there, an extracurricular activity that you may have participated would help you assess certain things because when you are there participating in extracurricular activities you know how to work in a team. You know how to formulate strategies. So these extracurricular activities that keep on happening in your college do not happen just for fun. They happen because they want you to emerge as an all-rounded personality. So believe me, make some time out for these activities and go for them. Thank you. That's the answer. Ma'am, if I am a bachelor student, I can participate wherever I want to participate in any event. Now as a PG student, I need to be more concerned about something like future and doing research something. So in that way, sometimes I will get a thought, no, no, no, I should not do this. If you can muster up them, I can understand how difficult it is. Time is a factor. But let us suppose if you think you can go for a play, you may not be an active participant, but if you are going for a play and watching it, if you are participating as an audience also, you learn something so unwind. Unwind time, make time out for these things, take time out for these things. That would be my suggestion to you because that would also sharpen your brain. I should do but now it's time to focus on what? Yes, sorry, your audio is not working. I have a doctor up here. Okay, I'll take a couple of more questions. Good afternoon ma'am. Yes dear, tell me. Ma'am, my question is, what is the difference between post office protocol and internet message access protocol? What do you think do the terminologies refer to? What is post office protocol? What do you think it would be? You give me an answer to it. Tell me, you share it because you know communication, there are so many terms that they end up confusing you. So try whenever you come across instant messaging is, you instantly message something. That is the common way of internal communication, right? But nowadays what happens? That is what I was saying when I discussed the question on email. Earlier email used to be a very formal affair. Now we normally exchange. It is kind of replacing instant messaging, right? So what would be the post office protocol? It would depend on the organizational structure, the organizational framework. How do they plan their activities beyond the confines of the company, okay? So if it is a very senior, if he or she is a very senior professional, you have to be very courteous, even outside, post office. Any other question from there? Good afternoon, ma'am. This is Amit Soodradhar, his baby a second semester. And my question is how often should send email to my subscriber? Sorry? Should send... Your voice, please keep the mic in front of your mouth. Yes, now. How often should send email to my subscriber? Which subscriber? Any subscriber. Any subscriber? How often you should send the mail to any subscriber? As and when is required. As and when is required, okay? So unnecessarily, now what happens? We unnecessarily flood the email box, right? There is so much information that many a times, because of the information overload, important information goes amiss. So if it is a routine, routine call, you need to make a routine, send a routine email to your subscribers, fix a date when you would be sending it to the subscribers, so that the subscriber knows that this is the day when I will be expecting the mail from this particular organization, right? So obviously if you have, if the subscriber has an issue, he would open the mail on that day. Another thing, as I said, as and when required, if the subscriber has not paid, perhaps you could do it at an interval of a week, three days, two days, depending on what the amount is and how often the subscriber has defaulted, okay? Okay, ma'am. Thank you. Any other question? Good morning, ma'am. Good morning to you. Any question? My name is Arsalan, my question is, how can we mold ourselves to become an effective speaker and a good listener? Well, we have been answering these questions in order to be an, you all are, you all come across as good, effective communicators in order to be better, be a good listener, read magazines, read newspapers so that you are aware of the happening around the world and when the time comes, you can quote anecdotes and news in order to substantiate your formal communication, your statements. You would, if you, if you start thinking, you would realize that people whom you admire as good effective speakers are those who come up with the latest facts, the news, have a good ring to their lectures and they also come across as good listeners. So whenever, if you wish to be a good speaker, you must be a good listener, you must work on your vocabulary a bit, read newspapers and magazines and practice. When I say practice, it does not mean, you know, only participating in debate and things like that in group discussions. Even when you are holding conversation with your friends in a group, try to be to the point to be concise and courteous so that even in normal life you come across as a good effective speaker. Thank you. Well, we have... Do we have any other centre right now? No, not under the... Aha. Okay, right now. These are sessions which would be answering on the... in the next session. Yes. Well, on the YouTube, through the YouTube, we have a question by Simbib. How do we pronounce it? Gadi or Sandeep? Sandeep has asked a question. There is limitation to communicate in English in government and semi-government offices. A state language is to be used for verbal and written communication. Very true. But the same government offices would send you to other states and even abroad on training programmes. And therefore, it becomes... And before sending them, they would give you a short training course which may or may not be helpful if you have not practised some kind of common language before going. So, it is imperative that despite working in a state government or government, semi-government office, you should be working on the medium of common language. Both the verbal and written communication must be at such a standard that we can communicate with people from other states also. The state government does not just warrant things to be done only in the regional language. We do have a column where in English or Hindi medium of choice which ascertains that we must work on those two languages as well. So, please think about the training programme. Think about the people who may be coming from other states to work in your office. Maybe for a tenure of a year or a couple of years, it will be very difficult for both of you to communicate and come at a common platform. I hope I have answered your question. A very interesting question, Christy. For communication to be effective, don't you think that ample breaks or breathing spaces are required in between a conversation. Silence is golden. So, pauses are an integral part of communication. But you need to know how effectively you use those pauses. So, whenever during conversation, during presentation, whenever you have made a vital point, a point that you feel is going to make an impact on, you can also navigate through these pauses. Many a times, you get so involved in a presentation that you lose the thread of communication. So, at such a time, perhaps pauses and effective pauses would help you assess where you are and get back to your point. Pause, think about the topic and then get back to the presentation. Thank you very much for bringing up this question because we often think that if we have forgotten during, if we have lost the thread of communication at some or the other occasion, it is finished for us. No. Utilize that gap. You may think that people have thought you have lost it. On the contrary, people think that you are thinking about the topic in your part to make an impact. For fluent communication, what are the important things required and how to implement in day-to-day life? First and foremost, clarity of thought is extremely important. This question was raised by Smita John. Smita John, thank you so much. Clarity of thought ought to be the primary thing in your communication. Once you have the clarity of thought, you can then hold a communication, hold a conversation with anybody and then remember you have to be courteous. Your tone has to be conversational. Let us suppose you are not very fluent and perhaps there may be some grammatical errors that should not matter initially. Because you have thought of learning the mastering the language, you have thought of learning the language and unless and until you practice it with other people, it is not going to be effective. Language cannot be learned in isolation. And therefore, I would rank these three things as very important and then would come other things. Correctness and other sentences, and ease of communication. Now let us come. Well, I will just answer Nishi Valimant's question. How can we overcome our nervousness and speak freely and confidently in front of the interviewer? Students, I will be taking up this session these questions, questions based on group discussion and interview skills. I would be taking these questions in our next session to be held on the 10th of February and I welcome you all to be there. For the time being, if you have an interview lined up, remember that is not the end of the day. Go face confidently and because the interviewer is under the same pressure as you are, simply because if he does not choose right, his company page through the noses. Only you who is under stress, it is the interviewer as well who is under stress. On that note, I would welcome Professor Apte to continue with this session and she would be taking questions from email writing and I would request you to get all your queries for Professor Apte. Thank you very much. May I please welcome Professor Apte? Good afternoon everybody. I hope you can hear me. I wanted to start with if you have any questions. I hope you have seen the modules, the videos and done the questions that were under the videos. There is only one question I have gotten so far. So, anybody has any questions? I have said a lot of things and I have already told you a lot of things in the videos. So, I am really not planning to continue the monologue today. If anybody has any questions regarding this session, please press the hand raise button. Anybody having any questions regarding this session, please press the hand raise button. Welcome. There is a website I want to share. Sure, sure. Hello. Good morning, ma'am. Yes, good afternoon. Good afternoon, ma'am. Ma'am, if I send a professor or an company an email asking for an internship or summer training about anything, and if I didn't hear back or didn't get any reply from him within seven or eight days, so what shall I think that he or she has ignored me or shall I send the email to him or her or how often shall I send that email if I didn't get any reply from him. So, yes, the way the reality is especially if you are sending such an email to a very prestigious institute, IITs and so on, then there is a good chance that the professor has actively decided to ignore the email and because they get so many emails asking for internship, they have just gotten tired of responding politely to everyone saying I am sorry, I cannot offer you a job. That should be the polite response of the professor but they get so many emails that they don't get time to do that. I would say you should keep your hope up and hope that the professor has not actively ignored you but has just forgotten to respond to you and maybe send one more reminder and if they don't respond to that also then maybe you can conclude that they are not interested in offering an internship to you but don't give up so easily. We do get some very interesting internships sometimes and I might myself forget to respond and if the student very nicely and courteously reminds me then I will at least say that yes, your application looks good, please wait I am busy and I will respond to you later. You can keep up hope to get that kind of a response. As long as you use good words I will just advise that you should use polite reminder words that I had sent you an email, can I gently request you to tell me whether you are considering me or not, something like that. So use some respectful words and there is absolutely no harm in a gentle reminder. So there is website screen being shown I am just giving this option to those of you whose maybe audio is not working or are a little shy to directly ask me a question you really shouldn't be this whole video setup is very nice and I encourage you to just directly ask me the question I would like to see your the video and the previous question the way the student asked it was a good experience. So please use that to just ask me a question face to face but if you are, if you rather prefer to write it then go to this URL www.menti.com and ask this question and what is nice about this URL you can use that code is that lot of the questions will just sort of float on the screen and it will be just a fun experience for all of us. We will wait for a few minutes or simultaneously you can use all the other ways that the this particular course offers you to ask your questions continue using that too but if some of the questions get posted here we will see them sort of floating on the screen everybody else will see them and it will be fun. There is a question I will repeat it here sometimes I know the answer of a question no sorry this is not about email or is it about email only. Shall mail content be plain format or it can be with formatting like underline bold capital etc. Good question even the previous question was good and yeah this is I am beginning to see the questions here also so I think in today's day and age you should you can definitely assume that everybody has an email client that will show formatted email. So yes absolutely use bold but do not over do it overdone doing sort of decorative forms excuse me becomes a bit distracting. You can see in one of my slides where I have a bulleted list of a when there is a long email I am suggesting that you should have a bulleted list with titles you can see that there I have underlined the headings so for something like that you can underline bold is often a little maybe like when you want to reprimand somebody or something like that you are scolding somebody you will put the word not in bold so I would not recommend bold that much italics may be to emphasize and underlining to if you are putting headings in your email those are two formatting options you can use. There is one more question I hope everybody can see these questions now please explain in details when to use cc and bcc in email. I had actually spent a lot of time in this slide but I know that it is confusing the short answer is if you are confused then an easy answer is just never use bcc blind carbon copy is a weird email option just it continues to confuse you just do not use it but yes there is one very specific scenario where you can use it which is when you are sending mail to lot of people and they are in your circle you are one person who knows 30 people 40 people but those people do not know each other they may not want their emails to be exposed to each other so if you are sending a party invitation or something like that or a talk invitation then put them all in bcc that is actually very very courteous to do many people do that that is a very specific case when you can use bcc all other cases are you know you can just ignore them just use bcc when you are sending an email to a big group of people who do not may not all know each other cc I think have lot of examples I think in the slides you it is like a for your information it is sort of tells the person it should tell it does not get used that way but it should tell the recipient of the copy that the email is not addressed to the carbon copy recipient therefore there is no action expected from the carbon copy recipient there is no response also expected from the carbon copy recipient you must remember that you can put many people multiple people in the two itself if you want a response or an action so if you want a response or an action put them in two if it is if it is somebody who you want to either tell that you have done this work if you want them to have the record of your message and anything else then you can put them in carbon copy main indicator for you to decide is an action from this person you want you want this person to know your message read your message but you do not expect an action then put them in carbon copy lots of questions come here it can be scrolled up yeah I guess it keeps moving no no no it keeps circling no problem how to start an email communication with senior scientist about mentoring or collaboration very good question the one thing that putting myself in the shoes of a senior scientist myself if I may say so humbly the one thing that gets us very excited is when a student shows familiarity with our work the senior scientist that you are trying to contact the whole essence of being a scientist is your work is transparent and known to the public that is what actually differentiates you from a corporate person or a for profit inventor versus a scientist so if if you want to ask for mentoring by that scientist make absolutely sure you have read quite a bit of material written by the scientist if the scientist has a web page you must have gone through the web page every detail of it and then your email asking for mentoring or collaboration should make absolutely specific references to that scientists work that is it then the grammar won't matter obviously the other common rules of respectful salutation rating everything you should follow but keep the mail short also keep the communication short not more than two paras or maybe three small paras in the middle in the first para introduce yourself in the middle para refer to the scientist's work and how your skill compliments that scientist's work this is what will get the scientist's attention and with a nice looking forward to collaborate sort of a message and then end your email specific references to that person's work next question anybody wants a face to face I know this is a lot of you guys are typing and the typing is but anybody is asking for face to face you can go to that anybody on a view want to interact please press the hand raise button at the bottom we'll go with that there's a lot of questions coming we'll go back to the multimeter can you suggest some resources websites where I can get samples of job letters I can but I think you are in the internet age and a simple Google search will lead you to that you should make the effort to figure out those websites that look look you know valid go to university websites when I was looking for sources for literature on email writing American university websites usually have very dedicated departments for such stuff they have a lot of resources for writing on these things so they have very very thorough websites on this so you will get a lot of job letter I think you'll get but I was not specifically focusing on job letters so I didn't do that search myself but I encourage you to take this as an example to do a good Google search you know filter out URLs that don't look from a good organization good I think you'll find it on university websites in sort of the placements and career services in the US it's called career services you'll see this on career services websites of American universities that's a good place to look at that my question is in regards of signature I will explain it a bit further I will explain it but whoever asked this question can you it would be better if you are a little more specific because I've already explained it a lot in the slides so what exactly did you miss where did you what did you get and what did you not get would be useful so I'll give you some time to ask a more specific question I'll take another question for the moment it's when a teacher starts something and then you're asking a follow-up question then it is push yourself to ask yourself really what is it that you don't understand otherwise I'll just explain the whole thing again maybe better for me to focus on what you didn't understand let me take another question while you formulate your question a little better how long should be an email ideally I have answered this in the slides it is ideally you should not have to page down in a standard laptop or assume that your recipient has a laptop assume that they have a browser window that is sort of filling the whole you know the height of the laptop screen and maybe 3 fourths of the laptop screen and then if it's a very important email write it and see whether it is fitting without a page without a scroll down or a page down once you have to do page down you will lose a large fraction of your intended recipients ok face to face we'll go to face to face hi good afternoon ma'am this is Arvind from Pune hi Arvind go ahead with the question actually my question is that while sending the email to any US persons or any they use non grammatical English so how would it be to how means how we should send them in email should it be grammatical or without grammatical or it should be casual or formal or what will be a good email description for our good impression ok good question one starting point I'll tell you that all the good email examples that I have given in the slides for sending to American recipients generally international recipients in fact if you have seen the videos towards the end I am asking you to avoid certain phrases which are very Indian and you know I don't think like PFA is not that common abroad revert is definitely misused have would and I have given you all those examples so avoid all that while writing to you know especially American or British or whatever recipients in terms of I am not very sure what you meant by non grammatical they have a different grammar and different spelling you can just ignore that as long as you have grammar conforming to UK English that is just fine they know that we spell color with C L O U R and so on but they won't hold that against you if you are very specific in your email client you can choose US English as the grammar checker you really should use technology to its maximum so you can use US English as the as a spell checker and I don't know where you have the impression that when Americans write emails they write it casually or non grammatically I am not very sure what you mean by there it is common to start emails with high and so on so yes that level of casual language is there even ending even a formal email little bit semi-formal email among a team with let's say cheers that's the most casual I have seen best regards is then to best but regards is there, regards is very formal beyond that honestly even in a very friendly team I have not seen anything more casual than that and one advice I feel in terms of even how you dress, how you behave, how you address somebody how you communicate when in doubt are on the side of more formality it is a very simple to apply, more formality will never offend anybody so if you are, don't think that if your email is very formal that it will be considered not so great by an American reader it shouldn't be overly obsequious or servile meaning in the old days colonial times people you should sign off with something like I am your obedient servant things like that if somebody is an American and gets an email which says your obedient servant or your obediently they may not want to deal further with that person but they will not be offended they will just think that this person lacks self-confidence so more formality never hurt somebody never offend somebody but try to avoid very very old fashioned and very overly respectful like I have said in my slides respected so and so is just not required these days unless you are writing to I don't know a supreme court judge or something in the normal scheme of things respected so and so is not expected not by Americans and so ending sincerely regards and all of that is also fine forget about the respected but keep to grammar keep to good English that is definitely not an option not an option to not do thank you very much ma'am I am satisfied with your answer and you have liberated it very nicely so thank you very much welcome yeah we can go back okay does signature shall be plain or formatted or in colour shall contact details be maintained in signature or they may be misused okay good question so I don't put my mobile in my signature although lot of people do if that's the only way you can be contacted then and you are at the stage that you would rather be contacted then somebody not knowing how to call you then that's the risk you have to take I would say signature should not have unnecessary colours and some beautifying fonts and so on it should be just matter of fact and it's your personal decision whether you want your mobile phone for example if you don't have an office you are a student and you don't have an office I think while you are applying and so on you really don't have much choice you may want to put it in your resume rather in your signature I would still recommend don't send your mobile all over the place by putting it in the signature that would be my preference it's up to you but don't know colours fonts no nothing required and the contact details mobile and don't put your home address but yes if it's a corporate you know when you work start working then office address and office phone number is what is absolutely expected it's like the if you guys when you have seen visiting cards the signature is the electronic mail equivalent of a visiting card so whatever goes on the visiting card title address basically name title address contact that goes with the signature let me see some more questions unless somebody has a face to face ma'am please list best practices for email communication as well as subjects that help to grab attention of the employer so the employer so I have examples of this in the slides I would encourage you to for that I spend a lot of time maybe 7 minutes slides of good subjects bad subjects subject lines basically subject line should be should carry some information it should if for example the email is going to some let's say there is some company okay and email that you are sending it is to jobs at companyxyz.com so you already know that this recipient is somebody who is supposed to be processing job applications that come to the company is the HR department maybe now putting a subject line there called applying for a job in your company is the most useless subject line you can put because obviously you have basically so I have used this word even in the slides it's you know every square millimeter of the screen is real estate and by saying applying for a job in your company to an email that you are sending to jobs at so and so you have wasted you know about 6 words that you could have meaningfully used so for example if it's a jobs at that means maybe which job you are applying to is not not obvious from the from who the email is going to so that could be in the subject line so application for software developer position if there is a job number add that you are applying to like you could say job number application for job number x you know 1 2 3 4 comma software developer so make it so that the subject line that the you know you really make life easy for the person who is reading these emails that if they can see they have you know 100 emails in their mailbox if they can see okay today my manager is asking me about did I receive jobs for applications for job number 5964 then they will do a search on 5964 and see all the emails that are for 5964 and that will help so one thought experiment you should do is imagine being the person who is going to receive this email you have to be able to empathize and imagine first case assumptions about they have this person gets 500 emails of this type every 3 days you know something like that and then see how they can help them filter search your email okay I have one example in the slides actually where I say especially I do not I mean corporate jobs the example that I have given will not matter but internships at universities if I can see from the subject line from which college the applicant is from that will help me a lot because if the college is well known then I will you know read the email seriously so or if it is from a third year student rather than a first second year student so I have given an example where it says you know fourth year CS major from whatever you know XYZ institute if I like that XYZ institute for any reason I will pay attention to it so try to pack as much information as possible to the subject line that is the main mantra if I have okay anybody face to face okay we will continue the mentimeter questions how to send long text based emails which may be uncomfortable to read in an email you can use attachments but attachments have the downside that people may not open them so I have again I have very very detail I will again I will explain briefly but I spend a lot of time on this in the video about how to write long emails if it is a report or I have an example in these slides about about a team asking for more funding to their funding manager or some senior they say finance director of a company so a team is working on some product they have run into some problems whatever estimated budget they had you know is not working out now this cannot be a trivial email you cannot just drop an email to a finance director saying hey we need more money can you give it they will have to be a whole explanation for it now again people like finance directors and all of that are very busy they can very much expect that they will not like opening attachments so plus they might be reading on the go they might be travelling they will have a smart phone again a little bit of inertia to read attachments so it will be a good call in such a case to put everything in the text of the email if you do not have figures and all of that picture so now you are forced to write a long email how are you going to do it so put the main main problem and the question that you are asking them and the action that you expect from them or the decision that you expect from them in the first two three lines and then say please so summary put a summary there saying team XYZ has run into vendor related problems so it is taking more time than anticipated and more expense than anticipated to finish this project and then decision question or something like that can we get whatever you know one crore more allocated in the next quarter for hiring three more engineers getting five more machines and something like that okay this is basically three four lines this should be at the top and then please see below for we you can also add that we need this decision by you know in three days or something otherwise there is jeopardy of us not meeting the customers contract something like that so these four five lines can come in the beginning and then you can say please see attach for a complete please read the read below the complete explanation and details regarding this query and then I have I have this example in the slides where they have bulleted list of what went wrong how what is the strategy to recover what is the ask let us say it is a funding ask what is the ask and what is the make up budget all of that can come but if you force the a big decision maker to read four of three four page downs all the even main question comes you have lost that person so executive summary at the top that is the brief answer I just want to add that there is a reason in corporate world summaries are called executive summaries I think I do not know but I think it is because they are for busy executives to just get the gist and be able to make some decision and at least decide whether the rest of it is worth their worth their time to read or not that is why they are called executive summaries is this service free of cost or in open source I did not get this question ma'am I have if I have to send the email again to which I have not received reply what will be its content how to begin such email maybe this was from the same person below before I maybe this question is answered you can say hello I had sent this email it is a gentle reminder gentle reminder is a phrase used specially in India it is actually not common abroad but if you are in the Indian context is very well accepted and people I think like being gently reminded rather than just reminded there are some email headings which could place my mail sent to trash could you please explain that maybe not trash but spam yes for example is whole example that I gave you a funding request if you put a subject title called need more money it is very possible that there are spam filters that put those kind of request in spam I do not know but like just hi from your friend these kind of things many spam filters mark these as spam and put them into spam and those sort of email subjects you should avoid hi hello anything to do with asking for money you know even if it is a formal thing related to your job it could be you as a student asking your department to fund a student festival but if you write need money then it will go into maybe the spam folder of your department head so yeah ok what is difference between email signature and digital signature digital signature is totally different it is a security related technology the discussion of which is I think totally out of scope of this it is not a communication skill it is a security technique web servers have digital signatures and even people can have can have digital signatures it is an authentication method I will not spend more time on that here we done this is any rules to be followed while facing e interview this is not related to all it is not related exactly to email let me see if there are more email related questions I can take these questions also is it advisable to use short forms in a formal email like ASAP EOD yeah if the forms are well known you know not the I have in my slides again not the whatsapp facebook type LMK or LOL obviously hopefully you do not have to LOL at anything that is happening in your workplace but BRB also is kind of kind of casual but EOD in fact COB in the American corporate world is very common COB means close of business in Indian corporate setting PFA is very accepted not nothing wrong with it in Indian setting at all so yeah if it is familiar you know sort of known setting you can use these formats no problem in case of a received mail from vendor is it to be forwarded to consultant shall previous correspondence to be deleted edited no I am not I did not get all the roles here vendor and consultant is who again I can take if we still have time I can 5-6 minutes are there I can take the questions not exactly the person who ask this email about the vendor either can you do a face to face or you know this mail from vendor to be forwarded to consultant can you re ask the question I am not getting what you mean by there is not always a consultant so if you could re ask the question with a little more explanation of what was in your mind or why do not you please come face to face now I am trying to get the other there are some questions here any other questions on the YouTube or anything ok good so I can take anybody face to face hello those that Amrita I am seeing you right now if any of you have a question there actually my question was quite similar to the ones asked before like for example I help my father with the job application and the employer replied by saying that I would reply to you as soon as possible your your email is under consideration and things like that the application is under consideration but then after two to three weeks the reply had not come from their side so we had a doubt of how much we should approach the said employer so how can we approach these people without seeming needy or kind of like annoying in a way see if like I already told the other person also if it was a genuine you know falling off the edge because the recipient was busy they would actually appreciate the reminder especially if it is after a decent gap I think for a completely unknown kind of destination two weeks gap is polite after two weeks if you get a reminder and the person gets annoyed you may not want to work for this kind of a person the so now the question is what is the risk of reminding if the person has already rejected you and they are not replying because of that then it will not matter it is one more thing and what will happen at worst they will respond back to you saying why are you going on sending emails I do not think that happens if they did not reply in the first place they are not going to reply in the second place they are just going to delete again there is no risk there is only I think there is only a tiny, tiny possibility of good luck that the person who you had applied to has actually forgotten really wanted to respond to you and then they will be very thankful you reminded them for a good gap you should remind if you feel you have good hope but you should be confident about your application like I said if you have sent some generic job application with without knowing the what the other person does what they want what they just write a very very generic email then it is not going to be any use reminding you can close the session ok everybody I think we did go through all the email related questions on on both YouTube face to face and the Mentimeter system that I had used I will maybe last chance for anybody to ask question if you want to raise a hand quickly raise it otherwise I think thank you for so many good questions I had not known whether I will get interesting questions or not but I did and so good luck and best wishes for your future thank you for listening so there are some announcements so please wait for a while ok we won't take more than a couple of minutes hope you were able to clarify most of your doubts of course because there are more than 1000 students it's not always possible for us to address all the questions but what our faculty are trying is to read all the questions and then get a gist of the kind of issues that need clarification and then they are preparing responses to these don't worry if you don't get responses to all your questions in the face to face session they will also be responding to these through the discussion forum and through chat so just to remind about one thing so there was one module on workplace ethics which was supposed to be in this week that got postponed to next week so the next week there will be you will have videos on global and cultural awareness and gender and diversity issues along with that we also have workplace ethics and related to that is the module also on sexual harassment because these are not only very important issues to be addressed even in this modern world as we are reading every day because these are happening across the world but these are also mandatory from a legal point of view so when you join organizations there are certain rules, laws sensitivities you need to be conscious of because even if you are very able and talented in many other spheres these can get us into trouble unconsciously or unknowingly so there are specific kinds of legal and governmental norms that we are going to introduce you to but also because we are living in a world where most workplaces in India abroad are multicultural multinational people are working from so many different backgrounds, social backgrounds, cultural backgrounds nationalities and you will also be interacting with people through electronic media from various other countries so there are specific kinds of communication issues that these require and those will be covered in the next week so please look out for the instructions about the videos modules, materials and activities that will be released next week for these modules and meanwhile have a good weekend and enjoy your studies thank you